


You Just Can't Go Home Again, Dorothy - (Constellation of Doubt  and Terra Firma - Farscape S4)

by shadowkat67



Category: Farscape
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Review, Gen, Meta, Reviews, Wizard of Oz References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-13
Updated: 2010-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 00:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22422883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Review/Meta on Farscape S4 EpisodesThe premise ofFarscape- when it first aired, way back in 1999, turned me off - because once again it was a tv show about someone who got trapped somewhere and was spending the entire series trying to get home. I could see the whole story - we'd have him almost get there, then not. BasicallyThe Wizard of OZmotif - where Dorothy spends her entire time in OZ hunting a way home. It's hardly a new motif -Quantum Leap- was about Sam finding his way back,The Fugitive- about getting the one-armed man,Incredible Hulk- about finding a cure. Basically the hero is searching for the proverbial carrot that he can't have and along the way helps a bunch of folk. In the first season ofFarscape- or rather the first six-seven episodes - the story is about a bunch of lost souls stuck together and hunting a way home. It culminates with episode 16,A Human  Reaction- where the hero or protagonist actually gets home or so we are lead to believe.
Relationships: John Crichton/Aeryn Sun
Kudos: 2
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	You Just Can't Go Home Again, Dorothy - (Constellation of Doubt  and Terra Firma - Farscape S4)

The premise of **Farscape** \- when it first aired, way back in 1999, turned me off - because once again it was a tv show about someone who got trapped somewhere and was spending the entire series trying to get home. I could see the whole story - we'd have him almost get there, then not. Basically _The Wizard of OZ_ motif - where Dorothy spends her entire time in OZ hunting a way home. It's hardly a new motif - _Quantum Leap_ \- was about Sam finding his way back, _The Fugitive_ \- about getting the one-armed man, _Incredible Hulk_ \- about finding a cure. Basically the hero is searching for the proverbial carrot that he can't have and along the way helps a bunch of folk. In the first season of **Farscape** \- or rather the first six-seven episodes - the story is about a bunch of lost souls stuck together and hunting a way home. It culminates with episode 16, **A Human Reaction** \- where the hero or protagonist actually gets home or so we are lead to believe.

Episode 16, A Human Reaction is when the series literally changes its focus. It's the episode - that I tell people to keep going until they get to it. If you don't like Episodes 16-22, you may not like Farscape. The story stops being about Dorothy getting home, or the niave view that you actually can get home by just clicking your shoes together, after having a bunch of funky adventures, and being chased by the Wicked Witch. And John Crichton is a bit like Dorothy - in the Premiere episode, he is an astronaut, innocent of violence, skilled in science, wearing a white helmet, white astronaut gear, and no weapons, doing a test drive. When the spatial equivalent of a twister shoots him up and into a strange universe with strange alien creatures who are in the midst of a prison break. His module accidently collides with a proller (plane) that is pursuing the prisoners - and the pilot is instantly killed. Crichton's module is then sucked into the ship, which it turns out is a living ship with alien creatures (none that are the same species) all held prisoner on it and attempting to escape with it. The dead proller pilot's brother turns out to be a military commander or proverbial Wicked Witch - and becomes increasingly obsessed with seeking vengeance on the man he holds responsible for his brother's death - John Crichton. Sound familiar? Crichton's sole purpose from this point on is to find a way home and somehow survive until he gets there.

That is, until, **A Human Reaction** \- which you don't quite appreciate until after you've seen the entire series. **Farscape** unlike most tv series is not episodic in nature, each episode is a chapter in it. Building to the next one. The first four-six episodes are perhaps the only ones that can more or less stand alone. The weaker ones certainly can. At any rate, a reference point on the whole OZ bit - Australia's nickname is the Land of OZ. This is where the show was filmed. (I happen to know this because my parents moved from Kansas to Australia after I graduated from college for about a year and a half. We joked about how they left for OZ and like Dorothy had to come back to dull Kansas again. Sigh. Truer words were never spoken. Having spent a month in OZ only to come back and go to school in Lawrence, KS - I felt much like Dorothy myself. )

Upon first viewing **A Human Reaction** feels like that teaser episode - where the hero looks like he's made his destination, met his goal, but whoops...nope. Frustration abounds. Yet that isn't the theme of the episode.

In this episode a group of god-like aliens, known as the ancients, are hunting a new home where they can co-exist in peace. When Crichton ventures into the wormhole at his fellow passengers and to a degree new found friends urging, the aliens snatch him up and create a virtual play from his memories to see how humans would relate to and accept alien life forms, if at all. They also snatch four of his companions - who ventured into the wormhole after he disappeared - out of concern for his well-being. What follows is an episode plucked from the X-Files, yet far better, because it is the opposite point of view. I'd seen this done before of course, and to the writer's credit they do reference films such as Star-man and ET. Crichton himself is considered a threat by his homeworld, thrust into guarantine, questioned, examined. When his friends appear - they are caged as well. In one brilliant scene - we see his friends from Crichton's perspective and from the outside human one - Crichton can understand them, but the humans can't - their languages are completely different. We hear Aeryn's language - which is basically English spoken backwards made up by the actress. The actors were told to make up their own languages. Rygel - the most alien amongst them, appears to die from the sedatives they've given him and is shown dissected. Horrified, Crichton tries in vain to save Dargo, unable to - he finds Aeryn - who has broken free. Aeryn asks whose side he's own, he says hers and flees with her, knocking out their capture and kicking him. And it is here that Crichton actually hits someone who is down. Up until this point - he hunts the opposite approach.

As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that this is not earth, that Crichton knows everyone, old classmates, people from his past, and each place he knows. Thrown by this - he confronts the aliens, and finally walks through a door that goes to a place he's never been and meets with the literal Wizard of OZ. The Wizard of OZ in Farscape isn't a kindly old man with a balloon, but an alien who wears Crichton's own father's face. He tells Crichton that they used his memories and him to determine a human reaction. Could they reside on his home planet peacefully. What they've discovered is most likely not. And then they provide him with a bonus, a gift of knowledge, the coordinates to get home - but it is up to him to unlock those coordinates, when and if he is ready to. He doesn't know they gave him this gift - until it the gift becomes a nightmare. The ancients are a bit like Glinda - providing a gift that is also a curse. The way home almost costs Crichton everything including his homeworld.

But that's not the only theme. The other theme is alienation, or xenophobia, the idea of not connecting, not being able to fit in with your own kind. And this rears its ugly head first in A Human Reaction, then later in Won't Be Fooled Again - an episode that takes place in late season 2, (where Crichton is once again taken home, this round he is told he was in a coma and that space was just a dream not real - much as Dorothy is told at the end of the film version of A Wizard of OZ. In Won't Be Fooled Again - the OZ references are rampant, complete with the insane military commander dressed as a cop in red heels.).

Finally in S4 - Crichton does make it home with alien intervention - they send him back home in the episode, aptly titled, **KANSAS**. But it is his childhood home, not the home he left. Where he was innocent. 1985 - when Reagan was still President, and Crichton was 17. (I was 17 in 1985 too, which may explain why this show resonates for me on so many levels). Before he lost his virginity, his mom, entered the space program, or achieved his dreams, before he jumped over the rainbow. And he comes here with his friends, a rag-tag group of aliens who stand out like sore thumbs. It is a hilarious episode - filled with cultural misunderstandings. D'Argo, Rygel, Wrinkles, Chiana, and Aeryn discover a photograph in an old abandoned house that Crichton hides them all in - the photograph is of a guy in military garb, giving the middle finger. They ask each other what it means, and guess it must be some sort of greeting - such as hello. And start using it as if they are saying hello or peace. When Chiana runs into a woman on the driveway - the nosy next door neighbor - she gives the woman the finger, thinking she's saying hello or something. Aeryn meanwhile watches Sesame Street - singing the abc's. Not such a hard language, she comments, once you figure out the sounds. And Rygel is in sugar heaven, apparently he has sugar on his planet but it is used only in poisons. While Crichton savors milk and seeing his mother again. Yet, he can't be there. And the problem they must resolve - is to ensure Crichton's father doesn't end up on the Challenger - which is destroyed. Symbolic of his father's inability to go past the moon. John Crichton almost kills his younger self to ensure his father's life. To ensure that he ends up in space. Foreshadowing for what is to occur later.

In the episode that immediately follows, **Terra Firma** \- Crichton actually does come home. But he is no longer the same man who arrived home albeit in his own imaginings in A Human Reaction. He no longer wears white. He has in some respects become more alien. His first reaction upon seeing his father is to pull a gun and ask a question - the same one that Jack - the alien - had asked him in Human Reaction, but the real Jack Crichton doesn't answer - instead stating, are you okay? It's not until Skisousa insists that they are the real deal and proves it - that John puts down the pulse pistol. Jack, his dad, and the dignitaries with him are over the moon - you've met an alien, we have our first alien contact. And John with a wry smile, tells Aeryn, Dargo and Chiana and Rygel to join him. Suddenly he is surrounded by a variety of species, none the same.

On earth, he meets his friend DK again, but they don't re-connect. DK and his wife, a fellow scientist, are envious of John, and upset that he isn't sharing more of his technology and knowledge with them. John barely sees them. His old girl-friend, who we learn in Rhaspody in Blue, he'd actually considered marrying and had been with for six years - tries to restart a connection, but he is distant with her. They might as well be strangers. And his Dad, who is being pressured to get his son to agree to just allow the US access - doesn't understand John's insistence that they share what they've discovered with the world. Meanwhile his friends are being treated as outsiders, sheilded behind a security detail, not given free reign of the planet, in a nice mansion, and taken on secure trips and interviews. As Rygel states, they aren't protecting us from them, they are protecting themselves from us. They are afraid of what we might do.

There's an interesting conversation between John and his father, which relates back to the one between John and the ancients.

What happened to you, John asks his father - who keeps pressuring John to only share the technology with the US. "You used to believe that space travel should be open to the world that we should share our technology."

"September 11th happened. You weren't here for that son. You didn't see...the world has changed since you left. There are terrorists who will kill anyone for their aims. Suicide bombers. Two wars. We can't trust anyone. Is it wrong of us to get the weapons we need to protect ourselves? " (this is from memory not exact phrasing)

John Crichton is quiet, but you can see him brooding and thinking behind his eyes. He is biting down hard. He states in his journal - I can't tell my father what I've seen. If I did, he wouldn't believe me. I can't tell him what has been done to me, what I know, or about the weapon in my head. I can't tell any of them. But if I could, what would they think? They show him Dargo's ship and it boggles their minds, the pulse pistol - they can't figure out. And when a Screech - an alien spy and assasine sent by Graza, the enemy tracking them in S4 to get at the knowledge inside Crichton's head, knowledge that she believes could swing the balance of power in her direction - attacks John's family, his father suddenly sees through his son's eyes.

John tells his father that if Earth doesn't get its act together, learn how to get along, form alliances and join together - they won't be able to face what comes out that wormhole next. And it won't be quite as friendly.

He can't stay home. His father begs him to. Fears losing him to space. Why can't you stay? Because, John tells him - I've got a job to do and if I stay here, I'll bring ruine to you all. But even here, part of him still hopes he can bring Moya, his friends from OZ back home to Kansas with him.

Enter **Constellation of Doubt** which occurs several episodes later. In this episode, Pilot has intercepted a broadcast from earth and it has been transferred to a tape that Crichton can watch on the tv set that Aeryn purchased for him while on Earth. He is transfixed by the message which turns out to be a news broadcast about his visitation to earth with his friends. Including footage from his nephews video camera and family interviews.

The news broadcast is a copy of Nightline or CNN Reports. Do we trust these aliens. What are they hiding. It reveals the paranoia and xenophobia, along with the hope. The struggle to comprehend something outside of our comprehension. In a commentary video - Rockne S. O'Bannon who had also created Alien Nation - notes that one of the overriding themes of Farscape was alienation. The idea of not being accepted or an outcast. Over the course of this episode, each of Crichton's friends sits down with him and watches. They try to get him to shut it off, they ask why he is watching. Why torment yourself? They are small-minded.

"I'm trying to figure something out." Crichton tells them. Aeryn has been captured and he's desperate to find her, so that is part of it. But it is also an attempt to determine if he can go home or if he should stay over the rainbow.

The specialists interviewed in Constellation of Doubt or the talking heads - declare Crichton is dealing with post traumatic stress syndrom. Is clearly under a lot of pressure and stress. They label and categorize each of his friends. Analyze their statements. Then they analyze how it was that Crichton came to be amongst them, how he survived. One guy states - "Crichton represents the best in us, his friends when asked what they like most about him - is that he never gives up. That's what is great about humanity - we never give up no matter what."

But for every good comment, there is a negative one. Wrinkles or Navitana - discusses religions in one interview - stating there's nothing wrong with religion, it is how cultures choose to practice it that often is the problem. And what we justify in its name. Yet, she says, in some instances it is not for us to judge...and look at the violence represented by your religions, she picks up the cross with Jesus lain across it as an example.

> "What did you expect?" D'ARgo and Rygel ask Crichton.  
>  "I hoped, not expected." Crichton explains. "He'd hoped his people would be better, would exceed his expectations.

When he returns to his home planet, one final time, in **Bad Timing** \- the series finale before the Peace Keeper Wars mini-series, he doesn't go down to the planet. He just goes to the moon and echoes his father's moon walk and picks up the torn photo of his father's family - his mother, himself, his sister, and his Dad. Then calls his Dad from the moon - saying in effect goodbye.

> "But you don't have to seal it off," his father states, "we are getting our act together - we can protect ourselves in time."  
>  "No," says John,"there is no time. I have only minutes."  
>  "How will we get into space?"  
>  "The old fashioned way. I've left you a recording of all the data that I know."

Crichton talks to his Dad via a tape recorder through-out the first season, but he stops and doesn't do it again until now. Here he has a final choice - he can leave Moya, he can go home. Pilot can seal the wormhole without him, leaving him behind, on earth. Safe from the monsters chasing him. Back in Kansas. But Crichton knows in his heart he can't go home again, he has changed. He is different. He is an alien on his own world. And he can't leave Aeryn or make her join him. She doesn't belong in Kansas anymore than he does. None of them do. So he closes off the way home forever, severs that last link and joins his new family.

It's the opposite of the Wizard of OZ as we see on film. It's the opposite of Alice in Wonderland or so many other journeys - where the world weary hero returns to his hometown or homeworld to a heroe's welcome and sits out his years telling the yarns of space. For home was never the true destination, it wasn't the point. It was a false carrot.

Home is where we make it. And is forever changing.

But that's not the only theme here, far from it. It's also about perspective. John's perspective has changed, as has his father's. Except unlike his father - John has discovered the hard way weapons and violence solve nothing. John has been the terrorist. The suicide bomber. The revolutionary. He has been the escaped prisoner. The fugitive. Desperate and alone. While his father merely bears witness to those who engage in violence outside of his periphery. The difference between being someone who lives with violence daily, and someone who does not. It's is a major difference - emphasized at different points throughout the series and stated clearly in the commentary of A Human Reaction by Browder - who says, you can tell Australians don't live in a gun culture - they don't react to guns, don't flinch. Me? I flinch. I see a gun and I want to run or get out of the way, I'm instantly wary. There was one guy in that room with us - who you could tell wasn't Australian and flinched - he was South Africa and knew what guns can do.

I found the contrast in views between John and Jack Crichton in Terra Firma, and Jack's justification for his prejudices and desire for violence, and nationalism - being 9/11 fascinating. Because - you could see, without the writer's ever stating it, and they don't, John Crichton says nothing when his father talks about 9/11 or this brave new world. He doesn't have to. We've seen what John has seen and we know it is beyond his father's imagination. There are worse things than two buildings and over 200,000 people dying. Two Wars have taught us that - if nothing else will. For in those two Wars - more people have died than did on that one day. Violence - John Crichton tells his father - solves nothing, it only causes more violence. Believe me, I know.

He seals off Earth to protect it ironically from those seeking venganence against him.  
And in doing so, seals it off from himself. He's a tortured Dorothy who as he states, dreamed of space when he was on Earth and dreamed of Earth when he was in space, and has finally realized he can only have one. His friends can't come to earth with him. He would have a better chance joining them. His people could not accept them. And he is closer to them than his own family. DK is but a memory. His father...a connection that he must sever. He must be his own hero. And make the ultimate sacrifice. Space he chooses, since home he realizes is but a construct. Gone.

As they state in the commentary on Bad Timing - when the actors were asked what they would choose - their new made family - their husband/wife, lover, or their blood family - father/mother, childhood home. They stated their wife or husband, or lover, of course. That's their family now. We make our homes where we will.


End file.
